It all started when I fell in love with [not without salt]'s Salted Peanut Florentines recipe: I just had to try them. And since nobody around me stepped up to make them, who was the one left with the hard, hard task? Yours truly, of course.

I made a couple of changes, but the most significant was that I changed it back to almonds instead of peanuts only because I had a lot of almonds at home I wanted to use.

Well, I mustn't have had a decent lunch yesterday, because I kept thinking of how I could build on this to make a bigger dessert. Which made me somehow think of how sunny it was, and how winter is summer holidays are coming, and how lovely it would be to spend them on a house by a lake.

Anyway, these were the (scary?) thoughts that led me to this House by the Lake dessert.

Start by making the house. It's simple: just make a passion fruit mousse (recipe here). Pour some of it in little molds (as many as you want: each mold will be a house) and let them set in the freezer for at least 5 hours. When serving, take them from the freezer a couple of minutes before, so it will be creamier rather than hard.

Then make the roof. Again, mostly following [not without salt]'s lovely recipe, roast 1 3/4 cup of chopped almonds and stir them with 3 tablespoons of flour and 1 tablespoon of sea salt. In a saucepan put 3/4 cup of sugar, 1/4 cup of cream, 1/4 cup maple syrup and 100g of butter. Cook over medium heat and stir until the butter is dissolved. Remove from heat and add 1/2 teaspoon of vanilla extract. Pour over the almond mixture and let it sit for about 10 minutes to cool and firm up.

Scoop spoons of it and place on a tray with greaseproof paper (bigger or smaller spoons, depending on how big you want your cookies to be). Allow for some space between each cookie, as they spread and become thin. Let them cook for about 11 minutes. Take them out of the oven and let them cool about 5 minutes before transferring them. Sprinkle with salt. You can actually do something quite fun, too: as they are quite flexible at this stage, you can place them on an irregular surface and they will get that shape: a wave, for instance - I find this interesting for presentation purposes.

But... where's the lake? We most certainly can't have a house by the lake without a lake! This will only take you a couple of minutes to prepare. Heat 10 halved strawberries in 5 tablespoons of sugar and 1 tablespoon of limoncello. Bring it to a boil over medium to high heat, until the strawberries are soft and juicy.

Use a blender to turn it into a purée. The coulis can be stored in a sealed container in the fridge for a week.

Last night we had dinner at my in-laws' and I took a box of them. It was so funny watching my father-in-law's face at the end of the evening as he asked "can we keep the rest to ourselves? they are so good". If it's good for my father-in-law, it passed the test!